inner shadow effect

[Milkman]

Please help me 🙁 … It’s urgent! I’d be very grateful…

[Mike Procunier]

AE CS3 has layer styles. Note that its not the full release & doesn’t include Cycore, Keylight of Color Finesse.( It will in the final release.) You can download it at Adobe Labs. If you do this please, read thru the CS3 Forum on that site. They have workarounds for several bugs.

I can’t think of a simple way to do it in AE7 but here goes.
a) You’ll need a stroke outline of the layer you’re working with. If its text just create a Stroke only layer. If its not text, use auto-trace or create outlines to get a path then use the Stroke effect.
b) add fast blur to your stroke layer.
c) use your original layer as a track matte for for the blurry stroke layer.
d) with this matted blurry stroke above your original layer you should have something close to an in inner glow.

[Milkman]

Thanks, but I’m looking for a directional inner shadow, I want the light/shadow to be only on one side of the object, an inner glow wouldn’t give the right result.

Maybe I’ll try downloading AE cs3. Are there no plugins for casting inner shadows?

[Seyfi Cem baskın]

It may be a late -very late- answer but, if you make your background alpha inverted matte and put your about-to-get-inner-shadow object right above it, you can put the whole comp inside a new comp and apply drop shadow, bevel alpha or whatever you are using to create a normal shadow.

Seyfi

[Phil Lebeau]

Better late than never! Your answer actually helped me! Thanks!

[Michael Goldrei]

It took me a bit of searching in After Effects CC, but you can do it using ‘Layer > Layer Styles > Inner Shadow’.